The company ICEYE Ltd, a commercial
satellite startup company of Espoo, Finland, is designing a
constellation of SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) microsatellites that it
anticipates will be more than 100 times less costly to produce than
comparable larger spacecraft. ICEYE is a spinoff from the Aalto
University Radio Science & Engineering department (Aalto-1
nanosatellite project), co-founded in 2014 by Rafal Modrzewski and
Pekka Laurila. ICEYE plans to launch their first SAR microsatellite
into space in early 2018 and, further down the road, create a swarm of
satellites (more than 18) to take images all around the world. 1)2)

ICEYE is focused on expanding the
availability of SAR data to support decision making in diverse areas
such as trade, exploration, relief efforts, farming, and environmental
protection.

ICEYE-X1 is ICEYE’s initial
proof-of-concept microsatellite mission using an X-band SAR sensor. The
goal of the mission is to validate in-orbit performance of the
satellite and begin operations with select ICEYE customers. Data
received from the satellite in space can be used for a wide variety of
use cases including monitoring changing sea ice for maritime and
environmental uses, tracking marine oil spills and helping to prevent
illegal fishing, to name a few examples.

ICEYE-X1 has been developed and
integrated by ICEYE (IXEYE -series bus). The platform is a three-axis
stabilized spacecraft with a mass of 85 kg; power is provided by 1
fixed solar array and batteries. The size of the microsatellite in
launch configuration is 70 cm in height and 60 cm in width. The SAR
antenna has a length of 3.25 m. The spacecraft has a lifetime of 2-3
years.

The ICEYE team is exploiting the
greatest possible use of COTSs (Commercial Off The Shelf) components in
their satellites rather than the special, space-rated components found
in conventional spacecraft.

RF communications are handled via
S-band for housekeeping data downlink at 256 kbit/s and command uplink
at 32 kbit/s while X-band is used for payload data downlink at a rate
of 50 Mbit/s. The addition of a laser communications system will enable
data downlink at speeds up to 1 Gbit/s.

Project development status:

• ICEYE completed four,
separate, aerial SAR imaging campaigns throughout 2017, delivering data
to customers and further developing the company’s
instrumentation. This step has been crucial in hardware and software
cycles and has afforded the company a strong footing before heading to
orbit. 4)

- During these campaigns ICEYE has
imaged, processed and delivered data to multiple partners, and has
taken many steps in maturing its commercial operations and technical
compatibility with the users as a result.

- In 2017, ICEYE finalized
significant partnerships with future customer industries and
established aerospace organizations. This includes a vast network of
ground station operators, established satellite data companies and
other New Space hardware companies.

- The company’s recent 2017
additional funding of more than $14 million moves ICEYE even closer to
achieving their goal. More importantly, as 2017 comes to a close, ICEYE
is shipping its first satellite, ICEYE- X1, for launch. This will be
the world’s first SAR instrument that has been miniaturized to a
satellite under 100 kg. The ICEYE- X1 will be providing data to select
commercial customers shortly after launch.

Figure 3: Example of airborne ICEYE imagery (image credit: ICEYE)

• November 20, 2017: ICEYE, the
leader in synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) technology, today announced an
agreement with the DIUx (Defense Innovation Unit Experimental) to
purchase airborne earth observation (EO) data support services from
ICEYE U.S. 5)

- “Having just opened our
U.S. subsidiary, ICEYE U.S. is on a fast-track in providing services
that will help the public sector,” said Mike Lyons, CEO of ICEYE
U.S. “DIUx is tackling some of the nation’s most
challenging problems, and we’re eager to provide them with data
support services that will help in solving those problems.”

- The U.S. Department of Defense
(DoD) launched DIUx in 2015 to build a bridge between commercial
technological innovation and national security endeavors. Headquartered
in Silicon Valley with offices in Boston, Austin, and the Pentagon,
DIUx facilitates DoD’s efforts to identify and work with
commercial companies, including ICEYE U.S., to help solve national
defense problems.

- Earlier this year, ICEYE announced its expansion into the U.S.
with an entity focused on delivering EO data in long-form to its
current and prospective clients. ICEYE U.S. is also developing data
analytics capabilities to support more varied industry specific
services.

• October 13, 2017: ICEYE today
announced plans to expand operations into Warsaw, Poland to further
develop ICEYE’s operations and accelerate company growth. Tapping
into the country’s deep and growing talent pool of engineers,
ICEYE’s expansion into Warsaw is the company’s first office
outside of its current headquarters in Espoo, Finland. Coming on the
heels of securing nearly $15M in funding just this year, ICEYE remains
on track to be the first organization in the world to launch SAR
microsatellites. 6)

• September 25, 2017: ICEYE
announced $1.2 M in new funding led by Seraphim Capital. This new
funding will be used to scale up operations in the development of the
company’s SAR microsatellite technology for upcoming launches. 7)

• 23 August
2017: ICEYE announced $13M in new funding, including an $8.5M financing
round led by Draper Nexus. ICEYE will use the latest funding to scale
up operations, including manufacturing of the company’s SAR
technology built from off-the-shelf components, and launch additional
satellites. ICEYE plans to launch the first three microsatellites
equipped with SAR sensors over the next 12 months, delivering Earth
observation data to select customers shortly thereafter. 8)

- This $8.5 M round also included
participation from True Ventures, Lifeline Ventures, Space Angels, and
Draper Associates. Additional funding was received from Finnish Funding
Agency for Innovations, Tekes. Since starting its operations in 2015,
ICEYE has secured a total of $18.7M in financing, including investments
from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation
Program.

• November 12, 2015: Iceye
announced today a $2.8 million Series A funding round led by True
Ventures, with participation from Lifeline Ventures and Founder.org. In
September, ICEYE also secured € 2.5 million in R&D funding
from SME Instrument within EU Horizon 2020. 9)

- Iceye provides quick-response
imagery from space with microsatellites equipped with imaging radar
technology. The Iceye instrument can see through clouds, obscuring
weather, and in the dark—all conditions that limit camera-based
services in situations where waiting for daylight and nice weather is
not an option.

Launch: ICEYE-X1 was launched
as a secondary payload on 12 January 2018 (03:59 UTC) on the PSLV-40
flight vehicle (XL configuration) of ISRO. The launch site was the SDSC
(Satish Dhawan Space Center) SHAR (Sriharikota) on the east coast of
India. The primary payload on this flight was CartoSat-2F (formerly
CartoSat-2ER) of ISRO with a mass of 710 kg. 10)11)12)

Orbit: Sun-synchronous orbit with an altitude of 505 km and an inclination of 97.55º.

Throughout 2018, ICEYE has at least
two additional proof-of-concept satellite missions planned to further
develop and demonstrate the capabilities of the company’s SAR
technology. To mitigate the inherent risks associated with rocket
launches and to verify specific provider capabilities, ICEYE has opted
to launch its three initial missions each through different launch
providers. ICEYE’s next launch of a proof-of-concept satellite,
ICEYE-X2, is currently indicated by the next launch’s provider to
occur during the summer of 2018.

Secondary payloads:

The co-passenger satellites comprise
one microsatellite and one nanosatellite from India as well as one
minisatellite plus 2 microsatellites and 25 nanosatellites from six
countries, namely, Canada, Finland, France, Republic of Korea, UK and
USA. The total mass of all the 31 satellites carried onboard PSLV-C40
is about 1323 kg.

The 28 international customer
satellites are being launched as part of the commercial arrangements
between Antrix Corporation Limited (Antrix), a Government of India
company under Department of Space (DOS), the commercial arm of ISRO and
the International customers.

Out of the 31 satellites, 23 were
integrated on the rocket (and subsequently successfully deployed into
orbit) using the ISISpace’ QuadPack CubeSat deployers and relied
on the ISISpace sequencing electronics for the timely deployment. With
the success of this campaign, ISIS (Innovative Solutions In Space) of
Delft, The Netherlands, has reached a total of 256 satellites sent to
space and 197 QuadPack doors successfully opened.

• Carbonite-2, a microsatellite
(~100 kg) of SSTL (X50 platform) to demonstrate video performance for
the future Earth-i Vivid-i constellation. Earth-i is located at Surrey
Research Park, Guildford, UK.

• IITMSAT [IIT (Indian
Institute of Technology) Madras Satellite], also referred to as INS-1C,
a student built microsatellite (11 kg) to study the energy spectrum of
charged particles in the upper ionosphere.

• Microsat of
ISRO in the 100 kg class, that derives its heritage from IMS-1 bus.
This is a technology demonstrator and the forerunner for future
satellites of this series. The satellite bus is modular in design and
can be fabricated and tested independently of payload. 13)

• CANYVAL-X, 1, 2, a technology
demonstration CubeSat mission (1U and 2U CubeSats) of Korea's Yonsei
University and KARI (Korea Aerospace Research Institute) in
collaboration with NASA; the goal is to demonstrate a Vision Alignment
System.

• Fox-1D, a radio amateur and
technology research 1U CubeSat, developed by AMSAT, USA and hosting
several university developed payloads (University of Iowa, Virginia
Tech, and Pennsylvania State-Erie).

• August 22, 2018: ICEYE today
announced agreement with ECM Space (Berlin, Germany) to launch two or
more ICEYE SAR satellites into different target orbits over the next
years. Leveraging ECM Space’s experience launching small
satellites, the partnership will contribute to ICEYE creating the
world’s largest SAR satellite constellation by the end of 2019,
aimed to critically increase the frequency and availability of SAR
satellite imagery for business and government customers. 14)

- As part of the longer-term
agreement, ECM Space will provide launch arrangements to ICEYE as the
company forges ahead on the development of its initial 18 SAR satellite
configuration. The first two launches of the cooperation agreement will
be performed starting this year through 2019.

• June 29, 2018: Following
the successful completion of the goals of the mission, ICEYE has
concluded operations involving the ICEYE-X1 spacecraft.15)

- In addition to successfully
demonstrating the world’s smallest Synthetic Aperture Radar
instrument in orbit with hundreds of images, ICEYE has identified a
large number of improvements for future missions. These relate to items
such as component choices, subsystem interfacing, flight software code,
ground operations procedures, communication links, thermal performance
of the system, and optimization of power management.

• May 22, 2018: An agreement
has been reached in which BridgeSat will provide space laser terminals
and data services to ICEYE, the first commercial microsatellite
synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) constellation. BridgeSat’s
low-cost terminals and associated ground services give businesses and
government agencies a faster, less expensive alternative to traditional
radio frequency (RF) solutions for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and
Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) applications. 16)

- ICEYE
provides turnkey data delivery and analytics services for commercial
and government applications worldwide, including global disaster
response, agricultural management, city planning, maritime port traffic
management and forest management. It’s the first organization in
the world to successfully deploy SAR satellites with a launch mass
under 100 kg.

- BridgeSat
will provide ICEYE its Compact Laser Comms Terminals (CLCT), which
provide up to 10 Gbit/s LEO downlinks in a compact form factor that
weighs less than 2 kg. BridgeSat will also provide ground services
through BridgeSat’s free-space optical network.

- Barry Matsumori, BridgeSat CEO
said that pioneers seek out other pioneers to change the world.
They’re the first to commercialize laser-based free space optical
communication and associated ground services, which are an ideal match
for ICEYE, the world’s first commercial microsatellite synthetic
aperture radar constellation.

• April 25, 2018: ICEYE, an Earth observation company providing synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) data, and Ursa Space Systems (Ursa), a Space data analytics company, announced at GEOINT Symposium
an agreement where ICEYE will provide satellite data to Ursa. The data
from ICEYE’s SAR satellites, used to monitor oil wells and
measure global oil storage, will enable Ursa to derive actionable oil
demand insights for their customers.

- “Ursa’s mission to
help their customers make more informed decisions is a vision that
ICEYE has been aligned with since our founding,” said Rafal
Modrzewski, CEO and co-founder of ICEYE. “This partnership is a
marvelous example of how ICEYE is able to generate valuable change
detection data for specific industries, such as the energy
sector.”

- Based in Ithaca, New York, Ursa
brings transparency to global markets, helping traders and analysts in
the financial industry, as well as the energy industry, make more
informed decisions. Ursa uses space-based data from satellites as the
source of their timely reports on these industries.

• March 26, 2018: ICEYE today
announced a cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency) to mutually
explore opportunities provided by ICEYE’s technology. By using
ICEYE’s SAR satellite technology and imagery, this new agreement
demonstrates ESA’s interest in taking advantage of recent
innovative New Space developments to foster business. 17)

- The cooperation encompasses
activities that focus on the design of the ICEYE microsatellite and its
X-band SAR instrument, as well identifying the most promising
applications for the data collected by such a microsatellite
constellation. “The collaboration with ICEYE in this endeavour is
helping us move distinct steps closer to our goals as we explore the
potential in the New Space industry,” said ESA’s Director
of Earth Observation, Josef Aschbacher.

- By empowering
ESA with ICEYE data, the constellation is helping to shape the future
of observing our planet from space. Data collected by ICEYE benefits
both researchers and a wide range of commercial industries. Challenging
issues such as natural disaster response and climate change research,
oil spill and illegal fishing detection all require repeated and timely
imaging, regardless of the weather conditions or time of day. This
shared effort to gain vast SAR imaging capabilities from new
technological developments impacts the whole Earth observation industry
and its end users.

- “ICEYE’s successful
first SAR mission, ICEYE-X1, and the forward-looking response to New
Space from ESA have given rise to an extraordinary opportunity to push
forward together,” said Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and co-founder of
ICEYE.

Figure 4: In this preliminary
flood analysis exercise image, ICEYE has combined and processed ESA's
Sentinel-1 satellite data with ICEYE-X1 satellite data to visualize
potential change detection capabilities. The image features the Seine
river and Orly, the Paris airport at the start of the year 2018 (image
credit: ICEYE)

• March 7, 2018: ICEYE, the
leader in SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) technology for
microsatellites, today announced an agreement with Kongsberg Satellite
Services (KSAT) to purchase SAR satellite tasking and data from ICEYE.
The maritime and ice monitoring data will be collected with ICEYE-X1,
ICEYE’s first satellite in orbit, which was successfully launched
in January. 18)

- “ICEYE was initially
started with a focus on actively monitoring changes in sea ice and
maritime environments as a whole,” said Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and
co-founder of ICEYE. “We’ve evolved to support many
different industries with our earth observation data services. Working
alongside KSAT, another fellow Nordic company, we are excited to
provide the company with greater visibility into their areas of
interest and together push the envelope forward for ice and maritime
monitoring.”

- Norway-based
KSAT is a provider of global ground station and Earth observation
services. With interconnected and unique polar ground stations in the
Arctic and in Antarctica, a growing mid-latitude network, the company
operates more than 130 antennas in an interconnected network for access
to polar orbits. KSAT currently supports more than 100 satellite
missions, including ICEYE-X1, with ground station services.

- “As a world leading
provider of near real-time information services KSAT is generally
interested in any new SAR mission to support the evolving user
requirements. We see the ICEYE mission as an interesting contribution
to complement our existing portfolio of multi-mission SAR based
services”, says Jan Petter Pedersen, Senior Vice President at
KSAT.

- ICEYE is planning to launch at
least two additional missions throughout the remainder of 2018. The
missions, ICEYE-X2 and ICEYE-X3, will help to further develop and
demonstrate the company’s SAR sensor and data acquisition
capabilities for select customers.

Legend to Figure 5:
This is a compressed and cropped synthetic-aperture radar image, taken
with ICEYE-X1. The spatial resolution is 10 m x 10 m; the scene size is
22 x 73.3 km; the look angle is 16º; the polarization is: single
VV, and the processing format is GeoTIFF. The image portrays a part of
the Indonesian Island Batam (left), the Singapore Strait, Changi
Airport, Tekong Island and a part of the coast of Malaysia. A rather
heavy ship traffic can be seen in the strait along with the pronounced
wakes of the larger ships.

Legend to Figure 6:
This is a compressed and cropped synthetic-aperture radar image, taken
with ICEYE-X1. The spatial resolution is 10 m x 10 m; the scene size is
40 x 83.3 km; the look angle is 11º; the polarization is: single
VV; and the processing format is GeoTIFF. The surface area of the
shallow San Francisco Bay looks rather strange in this SAR image with
the many partitions revealed.

• January 17, 2018: ICEYE has
published the first radar image obtained with their ICEYE-X1 SAR
satellite — the image depicts the Noatak National Preserve,
Alaska, on Monday January 15, at 21:47 UTC (Figure 7). 20)

- ICEYE-X1 is the company’s
first satellite mission. Both the satellite bus and the SAR instrument
were developed and integrated by ICEYE. ICEYE-X1 is a significant shift
in size from traditional SAR satellites, allowing the technology to be
condensed into a satellite with a mass of <100 kg. This in turn
enables launching a constellation of many satellites rather than only a
few.

- The full image transmitted to the
ground from ICEYE-X1 exceeded 1.2 GB of raw data and spans an area of
roughly 80 x 40 km on the ground. ICEYE-X1 obtained the image in the
span of ten seconds, traveling at a speed of more than 7.5 km/s and at
an altitude of 505 km. Matching what ICEYE simulated prior to the
launch, the final data resolution from the first satellite reaches 10 x
10 meters.

- ICEYE-X1 has been successfully
communicating with the ground since 05:20 UTC, January 12th, using both
S- and X-band for transmission. Telemetry data exchanged with the
satellite in the first 100 orbits has already reached more than 1GB,
surpassing a critical milestone for the mission.

- Rafal Modrzewski, CEO and
co-founder of ICEYE, said that with this single image, the ICEYE-X1
mission is already a full success regarding the firm's most important
goals, but this is just the beginning. The company is now working to
increase the range of incidence angles and to more than double the
ground resolution for ICEYE-X2. with the next mission launching as soon
as this summer.

- Pekka Laurila,
CFO and co-founder of ICEYE, added that after the initial SAR
instrument calibration is finished, the company will start operational
pilot imaging services for the firm's first customers.

Figure 7:
The first image capture by the ICEYE-X1 SAR satellite, acquired on 15
Jan. 2018 of the Noatak National Preserve, Alaska (image credit: ICEYE)

• January 12, 2018: ICEYE has
successfully established communications with the 70 kg satellite at
05:20 GMT (07:20 Finland time) now in orbit, signaling the next step in
the mission’s success (Ref. 12).

• Cartosat-2F and 29 of the
PSLV’s secondary payloads separated from the PSLV in a 505 km
sun-synchronous type orbit in the first 25 minutes of the mission. All
satellites separated in 7 minutes (Ref. 10).

- The fourth stage of PSLV-C40
fired twice for short durations to achieve a polar orbit of 365 km
height in which India’s Microsat successfully separated.

Sensor complement (SAR sensor)

ICEYE developed its own SAR
(Synthetic Aperture Radar) sensor technologies suitable for satellites
under 100 kg in mass, making it one of the bigger payloads on the
PSLV-C40 mission. One special feature of the system is its operation in
circular polarization, intended to reduce the effect of rain and fog
clutters.

The ICEYE satellites have been
baselined for a payload mass of 61 kg, comprising a deployable SAR
antenna, front- and back-end electronics plus data processing systems.
The SAR antenna consists of five elements, the central element being
rigidly attached to the satellite body and two elements deploying to
either side to create a 3.2 m wide antenna array.

The information compiled and edited in this article was provided byHerbert
J. Kramer from his documentation of: ”Observation of the Earth
and Its Environment: Survey of Missions and Sensors” (Springer
Verlag) as well as many other sources after the publication of the 4th
edition in 2002. - Comments and corrections to this article are always
welcome for further updates (herb.kramer@gmx.net).